The root of the angiosperm tree has not yet been established. Major morphological and molecular differences between angiosperms and other seed plants have introduced ambiguities and possibly spurious results. Because it is unlikely that extant species more closely related to angiosperms will be discovered, and because relevant fossils will almost certainly not yield molecular data, the use of d...

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) between sexually unrelated species has recently been documented for higher plants, but mechanistic explanations for HGTs have remained speculative. We show that a parasitic relationship may facilitate HGT between flowering plants. The endophytic parasites Rafflesiaceae are placed in the diverse order Malpighiales. Our multigene phylogenetic analyses of Malpighiale...

Many physiological and biochemical processes in plants exhibit endogenous rhythms with a period of about 24 h. Endogenous oscillators called circadian clocks regulate these rhythms. The circadian clocks are synchronized to the periodic environmental changes (e.g. day/night cycles) by specific stimuli; among these, the most important is the light. Photoreceptors, phytochromes, and cryptochromes ...

Multi-regional sequencing provides new opportunities to investigate genetic heterogeneity within or between common tumors from an evolutionary perspective. Several state-of-the-art methods have been proposed for reconstructing cancer evolutionary trees based on multi-regional sequencing data to develop models of cancer evolution. However, there have been few studies on comparisons of a set of c...

Heart rate variability (HRV) is a reliable indicator of health status and a sensitive index of autonomic stress reactivity. Stress negatively affects physical and psychological wellness by decreasing cardiovascular health and reducing quality of life. Wearable sensors have made it possible to track HRV during daily activity, and recent advances in mobile technology have reduced the cost and dif...

Light signaling by phytochrome B in long days inhibits flowering in sorghum by increasing expression of the long day floral repressors PSEUDORESPONSE REGULATOR PROTEIN (SbPRR37, Ma1) and GRAIN NUMBER, PLANT HEIGHT AND HEADING DATE 7 (SbGHD7, Ma6). SbPRR37 and SbGHD7 RNA abundance peaks in the morning and in the evening of long days through coordinate regulation by light and output from the circ...

The 1074-bp phyCs gene (optimized phyC gene) encoding neutral phytase was designed and synthesized according to the methylotrophic yeast Pichia pastoris codon usage bias without altering the protein sequence. The expression vector, pP9K-phyCs, was linearized and transformed in P. pastoris. The yield of total extracellular phytase activity was 17.6 U/ml induced in Buffered Methanol-complex Mediu...